Today’s Inquirer editorial brings to mind an article in the February 2007 issue of Harper’s Magazine (my favorite magazine)….  Unfortunately, the article still isn’t on line (but you can find Harper’s in some magazine outlets).  However, Rolling Back The Tide of Extremism, One Post At A Time has a good synopsis of the article, and there’s a useful reflection on the piece in Daily Blague.

This is truly interesting news, courtesy of A Hundred Years Hence.  Cars that run on compressed air.  I can see the jokes coming -20,000 miles to the congressman!

THE LONG VIEW A year of murder  By Manuel L. Quezon III Inquirer First Posted 01:34am (Mla time) 02/26/2007   Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in [...]

The decision of Pangilinan to go it alone frees up the 12th slot for a candidate I’d regretted being unable to support until this opportunity came along.  So my 12th vote is going to Danton Remoto.

For others, it served as an inspiration for future people power, which despite all that’s happened since can still be remembered as a high point in many young people’s lives.  A very good observation is that if people power has been defanged, it’s thanks, in no small part, to the Catholic Church.Yet as editorials both in Manila and in the provinces note, people power continues to live on at least as an ideal.  The PCIJ comments on the irony of a beleaguered military facing human rights questions as it did 21 years ago.But the writing on the wall was there for everyone to see it, in Edsa and Fort Bonifacio, a year ago. It seems like a lifetime, since: and as if we’ve come full circle.

December 26, 2007 marked the 38th anniversary of the New People’s Army.  Red Flags is full of praises for the movement.

THE LONG VIEW An assessment    By Manuel L. Quezon III Inquirer First Posted 00:55am (Mla time) 02/22/2007   In its latest issue, Katipunan Magazine asked me to write on the 1990s. Here’s what I wrote. A FAMOUS Atenean, Leon Ma. Guerrero, once wrote of martial law thus, “Today began yesterday,” by way of explanation [...]

Terrorism itself is not clearly defined: or to be precise, it gives to the executive branch of government a breadth of discretion no executive should be given on such a scale.More useful to my mind, would have been the creation of some sort of mechanism to authorize either the thwarting of a terrorist conspiracy in progress, or to apprehend and punish the perpetrators….  Only after the fact; and to punish its perpetrators and prevent a similar atrocity.Therefore: if there is a valid case to clamp down on those involved in a terrorist conspiracy, why not a special tribunal that would use some sort of judicial benchmarks, instead of what is the equivalent of a carte blanche for the executive branch?…  Let the chief executive transmit to Congress a request for a joint resolution stating an act was terrorism, and authorizing the security and armed forces to utilize the law for an identified target.

Ellen Tordesillas examines the “millions of reasons” candidates are being given by various camps.Inquirer.net has begun a series of podcasts with interviews of senatorial candidates: you can listen to Loren Legarda and Francis Escudero….  The value added portion is that eventually, the CVs of candidates and transcripts will be published online, too: see the first, of the Pimentel interview, with parts one, two, and three.Amando Doronila thinks the Senate’s role as training ground for presidents is waning, waning…  But I’m not entirely convinced (though I recall my father telling me it would be more rational to consider governorships as training grounds: almost as many governors have become presidents as lawmakers, many having been both).On the anti terrorism bill, recently passed, I have to deeply disagree with Philippine Commentary.

His description of the political system leading up to martial law remains the most widely-accepted framework for criticizing democracy in our country:The experience of the Filipinos… had been of parties that were not parties but unprincipled coalitions of the rich, the powerful, and the unscrupulous; of elections that were essentially meaningless exercises in fraud, terrorism, bribery and demagoguery; of politicians who represented no one but themselves….  The people cannot be governors and governed at the same time… On the other hand, a good and efficient government, a benevolent government, may exist and continue indefinitely to function with admirable harmony, when men of superior moral and intellectual endowments are in control of the state.The problem of course, is that who will ensure that the aristocracy will be of the mind and not a replacement oligarchy as greedy and stupid as what came before?…  This is Gleeck’s summary of the limitations of the Philippine political culture:The Philippine political culture is… personalistic but violent, religious but superstitious, corrupt but tolerant, hierarchical but distributionist, solicitous of form but not of content, legalistic, but careless of equity, media-obsessed and nationalistically vociferous with respect to rights but negligent to obligations.I’ve been catching up with the blogs over the past few days.